Tag Archives: Wayne Rooney

I think this is going well. My reason for thinking this is that for 45 minutes this evening I actually thought I was easily fit enough and good enough to play football for Manchester United. Granted, my reasoning for this was not exactly established by my moderately taxing fitness programme. While this whole ordeal has seemed like a big deal to me, I doubt players like Ryan Giggs and Paul Scholes got where they are by running for 20 minutes a day and cutting out crisps. Rather this fanciful notion was formed by the fact that for the first half of the game against Blackpool, United were to Football what Stevie Wonder would be to Darts. In the second half they annihilated hapless Blackpool and the reality hit that the closest I’ll get to playing for Manchester United is by adopting a Scottish accent and calling myself an overpaid waste on a regular basis.

Even his stubble is more than I could hope to achieve.

Elsewhere it has been rather quiet in the world of weight loss. With the weekly weigh-in being tomorrow, it’s a wonder I’ve managed to take my fingers out from down the back of my throat long enough to write this. I’ll be a supermodel yet, just watch me.

With little happening today, time to bring you one or two much-promised stories from the earlier days of this. Hark at me, three weeks in and I’m talking about this regime as if I’m Bob Dylan recalling going electric.

First up, the pros and cons of running to death metal music. Death metal isn’t for everyone, the drums sound like machine guns firing at a drawer full of knives, the guitars don’t just chug but positively grind and the bass is enough to leave more earwax on your headphones than there is under the tables of a primary school classroom. But if it is for you, then it is really for you. I am a huge fan of the genre, and this country has some bands that do it extremely well. If you like heavy music and ever get a chance to catch bands like Ingested, Annotations of an Autopsy, The Rotted and Morgue Orgy I suggest you give it a go, broaden your mind and support some bands who need it. A good gauge of whether you will like death metal is how offended you were when you just read the name “Morgue Orgy”. Reaching for the bucket? Then probably steer well clear.

The band responsible for my musings on the merits of death metal jogging are Trigger The Bloodshed, my favourite of the Brit-Death bunch. I first discovered them scaring the piss out of a bunch of floppy-haired scene kids who just wanted to dance at a metalcore gig in Birmingham and have loved them ever since. Their new album Degenerate really slams, and was my running soundtrack of choice on day two of this excursion. Now for getting me psyched up this was awesome. As opener A Vision Showing Nothing gave way to De-breed I was loving life, it was the closest I’ve looked to a genuine human being going for a run before or since. I detected a slight bounce in my step and the troubling thud of my heart trying to escape my ribcage was nowhere to be heard.

"Is that bloke in the crowd doing aerobics?"

However I noticed myself tiring extremely quickly. This is because rather than my usual, leisurely/snails/grass growing pace I had in fact took off like Linford Christie running from a drugs test. The double kick-drum assault had caused me to hit speeds never before seen, at least not by people who refuse to acknowledge any food that isn’t suffixed by “…and chips” as a meal. In a way this was very inspiring, tearing off down a country road to Britain’s premier riff-mongers. However I don’t think I’m quite ready for this level of exertion, my body is not yet a temple. Currently it resembles a dilapidated one-bedroom semi. The kitchen’s quite nice though. There I go, mind always on food. Anyway, I would however heartily recommend Trigger The Bloodshed for running to. As long as you are fit enough to watch tennis without getting tired and sweaty, you’ll find the catchy-but-crushing riffs an ideal aid to your daily jog.

"And you got those arms how? Ready Brek? Sure you did Linford!"

I know you are all gripped with excitement for tomorrow. Will his arms have grown? Will his belly have shrunk? Will he die in his sleep by attempting to eat his pillow while dreaming about giant Subway sandwiches? All will be revealed, I’ve got to run though. My body isn’t going to purge itself.